. . . but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.


12 February 2010



That business about my reading of Pelletier being more perceptive than yours is so not true, __________. The man demands an entirely subjective response from his readers, our own participation in this novel. It partakes much more of poetry than of prose. Each subjective response is going to be different, sometimes our subjective responses will seem to be in opposition. I am not sure that the active reader that Cortázar envisioned would be active enough to satisfy Bolaño. Bolaño wants everything—every single thing--that we as his readers have to give him.

I feel as if every important novel that I have ever read was simply preparation for reading this man's work. And damn it, even after the better part of a lifetime of reading, I am afraid that I did not read enough to be worthy of him.

As for your question, it is frustrating not to be able to read something written by Archimboldi, isn't it?

Somewhere here Archimboldi is described as a person who didn't pretend to reconcile the irreconcilable, as was the fashion these days. (Sorry. I do not have a cite for that in my notes.) Based only upon that statement, I propose that we simply assume that reading Archimboldi must have been very much like reading Bolaño.

As for the coincidence of these four scholars discovering him independently, let us just swallow that little pill whole without chewing it.

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